Well, whatever the opinion polls said, it never felt like landslide territory out there, and sure enough, Tony Blair has been returned to power with the dramatically reduced majority that some of us had long anticipated. A historic achievement, or a bloody nose? Perhaps history itself will have to be the judge of that one. Dr John Reid, who seems to have taken over from Alastair Campbell as the Prime Minister's chief apologist, lost no time in hitting the airwaves to declare that his achievement had eclipsed even Margaret Thatcher's. Significantly Mr Blair himself was less triumphalist, acknowledging that the public had not wanted another landslide and that the Government would have to take note of that. So much for all the Prime Minister's earlier warnings about how failure to support him would have left us waking up yesterday morning to the sight of Michael Howard standing outside Number 10. There was never the remotest chance of it happening, and in that sense, the entire Labour campaign was but another example of the spin for which the party has become famed. No, the public, in the end, judged it right, returning the party with the most coherent programme for Government while simultaneously reining in a leader who has increasingly forfeited their trust. There is no need to dwell again at length on the reasons. Suffice to say that the Prime Minister has paid the price for not being straight with the people, and for him, it will never be a glad confident morning again. The first and most obvious conclusion to be drawn from Thursday night's result is that, for the first time, clear limits have been placed on Mr Blair's authority. All that fanciful Blairite talk about marginalising Gordon Brown and driving through an "unremittingly New Labour" third-term programme now seems a very, very long time ago. I am not too surprised that Darlington MP Alan Milburn, who was brought in to oversee that failed strategy, has concluded he is better off on the backbenches. In truth, it was Brown wot won it, and without the protective shield he threw around Mr Blair over Iraq last week, Thursday night's result could have been far, far worse. But Mr Blair will not only have to listen to Mr Brown, he will also have to start listening to the views of his own MPs. Parliament, now minus some of the sycophants who littered the Labour benches in the first two terms, will regain some of its own lost authority - and that can only be good for the country. If the Prime Minister genuinely can respond sensibly and wisely to Thursday night's result, then it is not too late for him to leave office with a more positive legacy than the Iraq war. As to the timing of that departure, I would now expect it to come no later than May 2007, which will be the tenth anniversary of his coming to power. What then of the Conservatives? Well, the second conclusion I would draw from the election result is that they are not - quite - yet back in business as serious contenders for office. Across London and the South-East, they performed extremely well, taking seats off Labour with 7% swings that if replicated across the country would have given us a hung Parliament. Labour was saved from that fate by the marked regional variations in voting patterns, with the swing to the Tories in Northern constituencies averaging around 2.5%. What this demonstrates is that while the Tories can get so far by means of an effective core vote strategy, the party is finding it harder and harder to reach out beyond its heartlands. The Liberal Democrats have problems of an entirely different nature, in that there now appear to be no real no-go areas for Charles Kennedy's party. Their assault on Labour's own heartlands continued with stunning successes in Cardiff, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds - though not Durham, Blaydon or Newcastle Central. They were less successful, though, when up against the Tories in the South, which is still where most of the party's target seats are to be found. So my third conclusion is that Mr Kennedy will have to think carefully about whether his party's long-term strategic interests are best served by being perceived as being to the left of Labour. But perhaps the deeper lesson of the 2005 election is that the overall shape of British politics appears to be moving into a state of transition. The sense that the Blair era is drawing inexorably to a close as de facto power passes to Mr Brown is but the most obvious manifestation of this. There are other straws in the wind, such as the fact that the new House of Commons contains the largest number of independents since the end of the Second World War. It all points to the fact that politics is becoming less homogeneous, with less uniform national swings, more regional variations, and more shock results in individual constituencies. At first sight, the North-East would appear to be an exception to this general trend, with no seats changing hands in the region for the second election running. But though they were not enough to achieve a breakthrough, the swings from Labour to Lib Dem throughout the region are evidence of a longer-term shift in voting patterns that actually began at the last election. This election has not just loosened the stranglehold that Tony Blair has exerted on British politics for the 11 years since he succeeded John Smith as Labour leader. It has, slowly but surely, also begun to loosen Labour's long stranglehold on the politics of the North-East. | 
